Monthly Archives: July 2012

Grilled Mussels with Coconut Curry Broth–what more is there to say? Last summer we did a piece about grilling clams. Mussels–and oysters–work the same way. You pop them on a hot grill and wait. When they open, they’re done. We’re talking about very lightly grilled seafood here. As you can see from the pictures, Jody first made the coconut curry broth. Then we grilled the mussels (no, really, we grilled the mussels). If you’re deft with a pair of tongs you can get the mussels off the grill and into the coconut broth with minimal loss of mussel juice. Toss the mussels with the herbs and the coconut broth and Bob’s your uncle.

Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. That’s the way it was with Warm Radish Salad with Bacon and Pea Tips. Salad is a killer to photograph. Light glints off the dressed surfaces, producing bits of glare or “hot spots.” And if the salad is one part greens and another part something else, then while it may taste delicious to toss everything together, that homestyle approach doesn’t make for an alluring photo. The heavier components tend to weigh down the more delicate ones. What’s a guy with a camera and a chef for a wife to do?

Make the damn salad and photograph it a second time, that’s what.* The salad above is composed with a photograph, or dinner guests, in mind–radishes here, salad there, easy on the dressing. The photo shot from straight down later in the post is the way we’d normally eat the salad in all its messy collapsed glory. Different stees.

Today I had Apricot-Cherry Cobbler for lunch. Twice. A rare indulgence. I was outside taking pictures, the whipped cream was starting to fade–the rest of my family was headed for Cape Cod. What was I supposed to do, let it go to waste? It was a very satisfying lunch. This week’s subject requires no special expertise. Make the fruit filling, dollop it with the biscuity topping. Bake. It may be simple, but it’s as primally satisfying as a rope swing beneath a shaded tree on a summer afternoon.

There’s nothing like a bowl of cold savory soup in hot weather, and until the day we do a post on jellied madrilene, this Chilled Garlic Scape and Buttermilk Soup will have to stand in. It’s a wrinkle on vichyssoise, close enough to feel familiar, but with a few turns you might not have expected, like scapes and buttermilk.